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182 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication September 8, 2026
Martin Blake is a humble cobbler in York, doing his best to keep his family alive through a brutal, death-haunted winter. When his wife's domineering uncle, the parish rector, forces orphaned children from plague-ravaged London into their already stretched home, Martin's fragile world begins to fracture at the seams. Grief piles on illness, illness piles on guilt, and guilt piles on something darker... The ravens gather. The whispers spread. And Martin can no longer tell whether he's being haunted by his own sins or by something genuinely sinister.
The atmosphere here is suffocating in the best possible way. McCauley evokes 17th-century England with an authenticity that feels lived-in... the biting cold, the creeping dread, the isolation of a community slowly being consumed by plague. Fans of gothic horror will likely find echoes of Edgar Allan Poe in the slow-building psychological unease.
Martin is a quietly compelling protagonist. He's not a hero... he's a man with buried sins and too many mouths to feed, which makes his unravelling all the more affecting. The supporting characters, particularly the rector, are sharply drawn, and the central tension between faith, guilt, and superstition gives the story real thematic weight.
If you love gothic horror, unreliable narrators, and historical settings that feel like they could swallow you whole, The Raven is well worth picking up.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and Susan McCauley for providing an advance copy of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
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